Song of Homana - Part One - Chapter Seventeen

[kalinara]

So last time, Finn and Carillon had another one of those weirdly marriage-like rituals, this time with stars and rocks, and we saw the start of the battle against Bellam...



Actually, in a really weird storytelling choice, this chapter starts AFTER the battle. Carillon is getting poetic:

The sun, I knew, was setting. The field was a mass of crimson, orange and yellow. But I could not be certain how much of the crimson was blood or setting sun.

The ground was boggy beneath my knees, the dry grass matted, but I did not get up at once. I remained kneeling, leaning against my planted sword, as I stared into the Mujhar’s Eye. The great ruby, perhaps, was responsible for the color. Perhaps it painted the plains so red.

But I knew better. The field was red and brown and black with blood, and the dull colors of the dead. Already carrion birds wheeled and settled in their eternal dance, crying their victory even as men cried their defeat. It was all merely sound, another sound, to fill my ringing head.

Aw, buck up dude. Anytime you don't have to carry your boyfriend off the battlefield is a win.

Anyway, Carillon hears a step behind him:

A step whispered behind me. I spun at once, lifting the sword, and set the point at the man.

He stood just out of range, and yet close enough had I the strength to try for a lunge. I did not. And there was no need, since Finn was not the enemy.

*sigh* On the plus side, having presumably won this battle, you can now 'get a room' in the goddamn palace.

So go get a room.

Anyway, Finn tells him it's done, and gets rather amusingly dickish when Carillon says he knows:

“Then why do you remain on your knees like a supplicant to Lachlan’s All-Father creature?”

I don't know why, but that made me laugh.

“Aye, my lord Mujhar.” The tone, as ever, was ironic and irreverent.

I sighed and cast him as much of a scowl as I could muster. “My thanks for your protection, Finn.” I recalled how he had shadowed me in the midst of the day-long battle; how he had let no enemy separate me from the others. In all the tangle of fighting, I had never once been left alone.

He shrugged. “The blood-oath does bind me…” Then he grinned openly and made a fluid gesture that said he understood. Too often we said nothing to one another because there was no need.

And then he put out a hand and gripped my arm, and I accepted the accolade in silence only because I had not the words to break it.

For fuck's sake.

Anyway, Finn's come here for a reason: he's here to take Carillon to Bellam. Duncan has him, apparently. So they cross the battlefield, and Carillon is pretty effected by the violence and carnage. He thinks about the "Mujhar's Eye", the ruby in his sword, and whether or not it's just his eye, "grown bloody from too much war?"

Ahem: Finn put his hand on my shoulder. When I could, I sheathed the sword and went on.

Anyway, they meet up with Duncan and Rowan. And Bellam, who is dead. Pretty graphically:

It—Bellam was no longer recognizably male—was curled tightly as if it were a child as yet unborn. The clothes and mail had been burned and melted off. Ash served as a cradle for the thing. Ringmail, still smoking from its ensorcelled heat, lay clumped in heaps of cooling metal. The flesh was drawn up tightly like brittle, untanned hide. Chin on knees; arms hugging legs; nose and ears melted off. Bellam grinned at us all from his lipless mouth, but his eyes were empty sockets.

And on the blackened skull rested a circlet of purest gold.

Ew. Carillon attributes it to Tynstar and reckons that he'll never know why. But now he's going to go into Mujhara to claim his throne, alone but for the Cheysuli.

So they go into the city. There's only token resistance. Carillon's still trying to figure out why Tynstar murdered Bellam, since the Solindish aren't likely to follow a man who betrayed their king. Carillon goes into the castle and remembers Shaine's last act of betrayal, when he destroyed the wards. He ignores the Solindish decorations and focuses on the animal carvings on the wall. He realizes those aren't just animal carvings. They're lir, and the truth about Homana being a Cheysuli kingdom was there all along.

Though really, since Shapechangers told us that was four hundred years ago, you should know that anyway. But Song has been a pretty decent read so far, so I'm not going to harp on that.

Carillon gets to the throne: his lion...or is it? He turns to Duncan and finally addresses the subtext that was incompetently threaded through Shapechangers and much better done here. He asks: "Yours? Or mine?"

Duncan doesn't pretend to misunderstand. He says that it's Carillon's. "For now."

And here we hit one of the other great disappointments with Shapechangers for me. Because while the Carillon-Duncan dynamic is not center stage in Song of Homana, it is this ever present undercurrent. Carillon believes, though we're never told the basis for this belief, that if the Homanan people hadn't overthrown the Cheysuli, Duncan would have been the Mujhar. And it's that, more than Alix or Finn, that causes the real tension between them.

Duncan is older, more experienced, a man who (...supposedly) held his people together during truly horrific circumstances. It's unsurprising that Carillon, who is still young and uncertain, who is living with the guilt of the qu'mahlin (made far worse now that he knows the Cheysuli), feels this pressure to measure up.

When I read Song of Homana and imagined Shapechangers, I imagined getting to see the root of that tension. How Carillon came to learn his people's history. How Carillon came to believe that Duncan is, in some sense, him from another life. I expected that to actually matter.

I don't have to tell you how much of that actually happened. You read my review.

So anyway, Carillon points out that Duncan told him the throne is meant for a Cheysuli Mujhar. One day, Duncan says, after he and Carillon are dead. By the end of the book we'll have a better idea of when exactly that's going to be.

Carillon notes that, like the sword, the throne waits for another man. Which becomes a great entry cue:

I spun around, jerking my sword from its sheath. Tynstar, Tynstar, came gliding out of the alcove so near the throne.

He orders Duncan not to move, threatening Carillon's life. And dude, really, why don't you just kill him? This whole prophecy bullshit would end if you just killed Carillon here. You're going to gloat instead? Okay.

Carillon asks why Tynstar slew Bellam, Tynstar smiles and asks "Did I?". Carillon thinks for a moment about how Lachlan killed Zared, but then realizes he's being baited. He repeats "Why?"

Tynstar actually answers: Bellam was superfluous now. He had no need of him. And also, Bellam wanted to marry his daughter to an Ellasian prince, when she'd already been given to Tynstar. Tynstar notes that he did tell Bellam he'd die if he faced Carillon this day, anyway. Apparently sometimes Carillon's gods (?) take precedence.

I'm assuming by Carillon's gods he means the Cheysuli gods. It annoys me though that we don't know what Homanans believe.

This of course sends Carillon to grossville (And it occurs to me that Finn entered the palace with Duncan and Carillon and has somehow vanished...)

“Electra,” I said. “Your light woman, I have heard. Well, I shall forget her past while I think of her future—as my wife and Queen of Homana.”

Anger flittered in his eyes. “You will not take Electra to wife.”

“I will.” I raised the sword so he could see the glowing ruby. “How will you stop me, when even the gods send me aid?”

Dude, which of you sounds like a rapist again?

So anyway, Tynstar smiles and attacks. He uses Carillon's sword against him, channeling magic through it. But then he's stopped when Duncan throws a knife into his shoulder. Duncan then leaps at him, which pulls Tynstar down off the dais, but Tynstar gets up and Duncan doesn't. He's stunned, because apparently he's fucking incompetent.

Fortunately, Carillon's real love interest chooses now to show up:

“Tynstar!”

It was Finn, pounding the length of the hall, and I saw the knife in his hand. How apropos, I thought, that Tynstar would die by a royal Homanan blade.

...you're fucking KILLING me here.

Anyway, Tynstar is afraid to face true love, and yanks Duncan's knife out and teleports away. Damn, Ihlini have the best powers.

Finn helps Duncan first (broken rib, because he's a moron), and then Carillon (at Duncan's urging, because Duncan is a shipper). They note that Tynstar managed to corrupt the sword somehow: the ruby is black.

Duncan notes that Tynstar had used the magic in the sword somehow. Which is a bit of an issue, because the sword was not actually magical...before. Duncan realizes that Finn "[sought] the star magic".

Carillon is pretty nonchalant about it, relating how the stars fell out of the skies, and Finn's words. Apparently this is a big deal because "Duncan's bruised face went white." Carillon realizes that Duncan is fucking furious when he starts spitting out words in the Old Tongue at Finn.

He did not shout. He spoke quietly enough, but with such violence in his tone that it was all the more effective. I shifted uneasily against the throne and thought to interrupt, but it was not my affair. It had become a thing between brothers.

Finn stood up abruptly. Still he held the sword, and the ruby gleamed dull and black. Even the runes seemed tarnished. “Enough!” he shouted, so that it echoed in the hall. “Do you seek to strip me entirely of my dignity? I admit I was wrong—I admit it!—but there is no more need to remind me. I did it because I had to.”

“Had to!” Duncan glared at him, very white around the mouth, yet blotched from pain and anger. “Had the gods denied you—what then? What would we have done for a king?”

Carillon is a bit nonplussed, and Duncan explains that Finn had asked the gods for star magic, and they must have granted it since Carillon is still alive. Apparently in six hundred years, only two men survived the ceremony. Carillon's like "you mean three now." And Duncan's all "No, I was counting you."

Carillon, rather understandably, wants to know why.

Finn explains that he believed that Homana and the Cheysuli needed it. But Duncan attributes a more selfish motive: Finn was trying to claim Hale's legacy. He notes that if Finn failed, both he and Carillon would have been struck down.

...you know, mutual death doesn't really make it seem LESS like a marriage ceremony.

Carillon asks why, and Finn answers:

Still he stared at the stone. “I wanted to,” he said, very low. “All my life I have wanted to ask it. To see if I was my jehan’s true son.” I saw bitterness twist his face. “I had less of him than Duncan…his bu’sala. I wanted what I could get; to get it, I would take it. So I did. And I would do it all again, because I know it would succeed.”

“How?” Duncan demanded. “There is no guarantee.”

“This time there is. You have only to look at the prophecy.”

Silence filled the hall. And then Duncan broke it by laughing. It was not entirely the sound of humor, but the tension was shattered at last. “Prophecy,” he said. “By the gods, my rujholli speaks of the prophecy. And speaks to the gods.” He sighed and shook his head. “The first I do often enough, but the second—oh, the second…not for a bu’sala to do. No. Only a blood-son, not a foster-son.” For a moment Duncan looked older than his years, and very tired. “I would trade it all to claim myself Hale’s blood-son. And you offer it up to the gods. A sacrifice. Oh Finn, will you never learn?”

And okay, marriage jokes and such aside, this is FASCINATING for so many reasons.

1) One of the things I've really appreciated about Song of Homana is that it actually does at times address the damage caused by Hale's actions. Hale and Lindir are not a romantic story. Not to the Cheysuli who died because of Shaine's anger. And especially not to the son that was abandoned at birth so Hale could elope with a teenaged princess.

Shapechangers was an utterly terrible book, but there was a point where Roberson hit on something interesting: the idea that Finn's behavior toward Alix was motivated by hate and anger. Unfortunately, she'd made him such a cartoon character that it didn't work. At that time, Roberson wasn't willing to look at what any of this actually meant for the characters.

But Song shows us, far better than Shapechangers' stupid rape fantasy, that Finn is hurt and damaged and has suffered horrifically from his father's actions. And he doesn't even have the dubious comfort that Duncan has, in the memory of a relationship with his father.

Hale isn't even a memory to Finn. He's a curse. That's all. So while it doesn't make what Finn did okay, it does make a lot of sense. Carillon has Hale's sword. Duncan had Hale's raising (for a short time). Alix is the child of Hale's love. Finn wants something, anything of his father's for himself.

2) Duncan's side of this is also really interesting. Song has, in subtle ways, really emphasized the HALF in Duncan and Finn's half-brother relationship. But most of that has been about Duncan and HIS lineage. Even Shapechangers touched on it a little: that Duncan may well be descended from line of original Mujhars.

But here we see the HALF brought up again, but with a different focus: Hale. And there are some really interesting implications about the role Hale may have had in Cheysuli society. The star magic appears to be something very different from the normal Cheysuli gifts. Hale somehow managed to create this sword that has some kind of genuine significance (though it wasn't truly magical until Finn finished the work).

But the line about speaking TO the gods is interesting. And the differentiation between step-son and actual son. Duncan's father is dead. Hale is the only father that Duncan has ever known, even though he apparently only had him for two or three years. (...this still doesn't quite mesh with parts of Shapechangers, but Song is the better book, so we'll go with the retcon. Also it shaves a few years off the age difference between either man and Alix.)

Duncan had Hale as a father in spirit, but not by blood. He's not Hale's heir. Finn is, though Finn never knew the man at all. There's a lot of room for mutual resentment.

I remember really looking forward to the idea that Shapechangers would have explored more about Hale as a man, and his influence on his son(s) and his daughter, and the complicated multi-layered sibling dynamics.

Yeah...that didn't happen. Obviously.

2b) Honestly, wouldn't it make a lot more sense if Alix's old blood came from Hale? Until now, Finn hadn't shown signs of unusual power, but the star magic thing does seem to be something else. Talking to gods? Okay, maybe there's something to that.

It would make it a lot more palatable than the old blood coming from Alix's white mom.

3) THIS is the Finn I loved as a kid. He's flawed. He's an asshole. He can be incredibly selfish. He's damaged. And he manages to be all of these things without being a rapist! I don't need the characters I love to be perfect. I wouldn't love them if they were. Those imperfections are what make them compelling. This Finn is compelling. This Carillon (...when Electra isn't involved) is compelling. This Duncan is compelling. And the Alix that COULD be, that is occasionally hinted at, she could be compelling too.

THESE are the characters that deserved a prequel. Not the rapists, abusers, and racists we got in Shapechangers.

So anyway, back to Carillon, who has just learned that he's been unwittingly sucked up into his boyfriend's daddy issues. So what's his reaction?

I said nothing for a long moment. I could think of nothing to fill the silence. And then I rose at last and took my sword back from Finn, touching the blackened ruby. I returned the weapon to my sheath. “The thing is done,” I said finally. “The risk was worth the asking. And I would do it all again.”

Finn looked at me sharply. “Even knowing?”

“Even knowing.” I shrugged and sat down in the throne. “What else was there to do?”

...okay, look. The throne room IS a room. You can totally fuck in a throne room guys. Kick Duncan out and go do it.

And with that note, the chapter ends.